Appian: Drives conversions with video marketing

Appian is a leading Business Process Management (BPM) software provider. The company’s product suite allows departments to collaborate in a fully mobile work environment, helping enterprises increase productivity and cut costs. The company uses content marketing to highlight how its complex offerings simplify customers’ workflows.

Appian’s Director of Marketing Programs Mary Kirkman published several videos of product overviews on the site, but needed strategy and production resource. The brand partnered with Brafton to execute a strategy with consistent and diverse video content that supports the full prospect-to-customer journey.

Challenge:

Move from one-off videos to a consistent strategy

After developing a corporate blogging strategy for the Appian brand, Kirkman understood the site also needed interactive content, like videos, to gain visibility in search and on social networks. While the brand had already produced some video product demos as sales tools, it lacked clips that reached and engaged new audiences and wasn’t seeing conversion potential with existing videos.

Goals:

Brand awareness and new visitors

Increase engagement on Appian.com

Conversions

Appian had been creating video content with a studio, and the cost of video production used most of its budget for this format. Ultimately, this limited the company’s ability to create more than one or two videos a year.

“Appian stays on the cutting edge of marketing, but because we don’t have that large of a team, we have to be that much smarter about what we’re doing.” Ben Farrell, Director of Corporate Communications

Appian needed to increase video production within budget for a consistent, diversified strategy. Working with Brafton, it looked to create videos that engage users at different stages of the purchase funnel.

“A lot of companies build in-house teams to produce necessary volumes of engaging content. That wasn’t a model that was going to work for us. Brafton has become an extension of us — our Brafton team truly understands the value of videos for our brand and how we can get value from them.” Kirkman

Strategy:

Create monthly video content in line with a range of corporate goals

Brafton worked with Kirkman to create an editorial calendar for video production based on the brand’s overarching corporate marketing strategy. Appian gets a mix of studio-based video blogs and animated product clips each month, as well as strategically timed videos to support marketing programs during important product launches.

Strategy:

Monthly vertical-targeted animation videos or product demos

Monthly studio video blogs with industry commentary

Design simple video navigation options based on subject or “category”

Built-in resource for videos to support timely campaigns

At first, Kirkman was primarily interested in animated videos to showcase the capabilities of Appian’s BPM suite and solutions forspecific verticals. Thanks to Brafton’s consulting, the site additionally hosts monthly video blogs discussing the advantages of using a collaborative software suite. These aim to attract new prospects, and also re-engage current subscribers.

The dynamic strategy and communication between Brafton and Appian also empowers the company to create other types of videos that serve marketing opportunities. Brafton and Appian collaborate on in-depth, animated videos two months prior to the launch of sales initiatives or campaigns. For instance, Brafton created an on-site expert interview with Vice President of Industry Markets Marc Wilson.

“Brafton shows creativity not just in the project, but in the process itself. There is a synergy between our companies that’s almost cultural.” Kirkman

Results:

Conversions from video viewers, increased site engagement

Appian has seen strong results since increasing its video marketing efforts with Brafton. In its first three months publishing Brafton’s video content, Appian’s video viewers generated a significant share of the site’s conversions, and they had a 249% higher than non-viewer conversion rate overall.

The videos are effectively converting traffic into leads and customers, and they are also bringing more visitors to the site overall. Between Q1 and Q2 2013, the number of Pageviews to Appian’s BPM-Video landing page increased 248 percent. The number of unique PageViews rose 309 percent during that reporting period.

Because Appian wanted to increase engagement, it was important that video content made the site stickier. The Brafton video content kept visitors on pages longer, increasing the average viewers’ Time on Site 30.78 percent between Q1 and Q2 2013, correlating to the introduction of Brafton’s content.

Appian also noted impressive (continued) gains for the product and customer categories Brafton helped it develop on its video landing page, indicating the company is winning new traffic and effectively directing existing site visitors to relevant video resources based on their place in the sales cycle. Quarter over quarter after launching Brafton’s videos, Product video unique Pageviews saw an 880 percent lift, and Customer video unique Pageviews rose 371.3 percent. The average time on site for both of these categories went up 73 percent because Appian exemplified the ideal storytelling brand in its video content. This established thought leadership and industry authority.

The video category landing have already increased site stickiness, drawing in visitors and keeping them there 30 percent longer than other pages. Its product video category performed even better with an average time on site 93 percent longer than the site average.